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Wait, Google Sent Me

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Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#201

Post by PeterisP »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38
ergest wrote: post #27

This is gonna mess up some major web analytics stats about referrers :)

As someone who works with SEO, this was my first reaction. It's going to make a lot of my analytics wonky and the numbers won't be very accurate. I guess you have to assume such a small percentage of people will actually be using this, so the numbers won't be too bad??

It's the same thing as with browser identification and detection of mobile devices - as soon as you start using them for non-info purposes e.g. disabling content or redirecting people to a mobile-specific page (or an advert for 'app of your site) that they don't want, then you have to expect that any well-meaning software will have the user device lie to you, because it's in the best interests of the user.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#203

Post by NearAP »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #130
mapgrep wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people inside the NYT know the pricing for digital subscriptions is excessive. They're high because circ department won an internal war and inflated digital prices in a misguided attempt to protect print subs. The NYT has experimented but is still clinging to the past. Which is why the "All Digital Access" subscription costs more than Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Now combined. Give me a break.

This raised an interesting question for me - how much money is saved on a per-subscriber basis by sending the digital version vs. print (for the NYT)? Their pricing certainly doesn't reflect it: Web + Smartphone: $3.75/wk $16.25/mo $195/yr Web + Tablet: $5.00/wk $21.67/mo $260/yr All Digital Access: $8.75/wk $37.92/mo $455/yr 7-Day Home Delivery: $8.90/wk $38.57/mo $463/yr There are multiple levels of insanity here:…

On the smart phone, you don't see the comments for an article but the Tablet version gives you the comments. I can't say if the comments are worth the 33% extra cost but I typically end up reading the web version because I find the comments on the article usually interesting. I ended up going for the Web + Smartphone version because I like reading NYTimes and this was the cheapest I could afford. I've also found quite a few people in this same position.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#204

Post by austenallred »

donohoe wrote: post #69
herbig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you wrote a Chrome extension that cuts most of the ads from NYT.

Yes. My guess is you're leaving that statement hanging to make a larger point? If so I'd love to add that I'm annoyed by some of the tactics and lengths that publishers go to to monetize content ad the expense of user-experience and other costs. The only path right now are ads, 'sponsored content', 'native units'. I would much rather we have a subscription-based model that generated enough revenue to ween them off aw…

> I'm annoyed by some of the tactics and lengths that publishers go to to monetize content

> having readers circumvent that, as opposed to supporting that, is disheartening to many of us who are working on the inside to push change.

So what you're saying is that it's OK to circumvent the methods of monetization you don't support?

He doesn't like paywalls, so he circumvents them. You don't like ads, so you circumvent them. And then you say shame on you? This is absolutely the pot calling the kettle black.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#205

Post by MichaelGG »

snowwrestler wrote: post #158
jashkenas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who'd link to the NYT if it was always a paywall, indeed? Of course I understand that the publishers don't want to cut themselves out of the conversation. But why must "the conversation" be limited to powerful internet companies? Do we not converse about news articles in blog posts? Comment threads? Up and coming social platforms that don't have Facebooks media clout yet? It's simply unfair to treat a visitor arrivin…

So publishers should either block traffic from search engines, or not have a paywall at all. Neither seems economically viable to me. It would not be hard for Google to append one-time, time-limited tokens to SERP links to get searchers from Google to NYT (or other big publishers). Google would just need to provide an invite-only API for the publishers to check the tokens against in real time. At their scale this wou…

So your proposal if to make Google say "hmm, I don't really think you searched for that, so the link is going to have missing content"? Otherwise how are they gonna differentiate between someone searching and finding the article "by accident" vs on purpose? Sounds like a crappy user experience.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#206

Post by MichaelGG »

javiercr wrote: post #56

IMHO rendering totally different things depending on the http referrer should be considered as cloaking. It's basically the same practice than rendering a different thing if the User-Agent matches Googlebot. I wonder what would happen to your site if you did this without being The New York Times. Kudos to Jeremy for this.

Google actually encourages this and call it first click free.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#207

Post by PhantomGremlin »

ryandrake wrote: post #161
manigandham wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life and business is all about 3rd parties and working with and against them. It's quite easy to say that things should just be better but it's not like all these publishers are stupid and just sitting around not trying to come up with better solutions. This is actually the best we have at this moment without a massive shift in how the web works. The fact is that the internet makes things very easy to take without re…

There's no taking going on here. Taking something implies a transfer of possession, leaving one party no longer in possession of that thing. My browsing a web page does not result in such an outcome.

Reminds me of the very old joke about software:

   Software is like VD
   you can give it away and you've still got it

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#208

Post by PhantomGremlin »

untog wrote: post #199
fab13n wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paywall model is currently broken: * not culturally integrated the way we don't mind paying for smartphone apps; * not atomic enough (we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription); * it raises convenience and trust issues; * it competes against ad-based models, which adblockers have failed to bankrupt until now; * paywall sites aren't taken into…

we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription Is that true, though? I think Spotify has proved that people prefer subscriptions to one-off payments for music, for example. Having to make a purchase/don't purchase decision for every news article you read doesn't seem like a good experience at all.

Yes it is true. For a single payment to Spotify you get access to music from all four major record labels.

OTOH paying for a subscription to a single newspaper is like subscribing separately to Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Not gonna happen.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#209

Post by PhantomGremlin »

udev wrote: post #21

Good idea, but does not work with Financial Times.

FT has (as far as I've been able to determine) a hard paywall. But they do give you a certain number of free articles per month (8 IIRC?) if you create an account. Also everything at FT Alphaville is free with an account.

Good enough for me!

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#210

Post by OrwellianChild »

untog wrote: post #195
OrwellianChild wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This raised an interesting question for me - how much money is saved on a per-subscriber basis by sending the digital version vs. print (for the NYT)? Their pricing certainly doesn't reflect it: Web + Smartphone: $3.75/wk $16.25/mo $195/yr Web + Tablet: $5.00/wk $21.67/mo $260/yr All Digital Access: $8.75/wk $37.92/mo $455/yr 7-Day Home Delivery: $8.90/wk $38.57/mo $463/yr There are multiple levels of insanity here:…

The reason that print+web packages don't cost significantly more than web-only is because print advertising is still a lucrative business. NYT can a a absolutely justify giving away the paper to subscribers on that basis.

Except, if that were true, why not just make it a free paper? Presumably ad targeting... I understand the limitations of their existing revenue model. It just results in some pretty consumer-unfriendly offerings, at the expense of readership and penetration...

---

EDIT: Went back to look at the numbers... They have tons of online eyeballs - those eyeballs just don't make much money. They manage to double their digital revenue with the paywall. Even so, it's dwarfed by the print revenue.

This may shift as advertisers see the value of targeted online user groups... I could totally imagine the NYT of the future being a collection of blogs dealing in Tech, Biz, World News, Local News, etc. Ads on the Biz site would be targeted differently than on the World News site. This might give advertisers what they want in terms of a differentiated audience.

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From the 2014 Annual Report:

  Average Paper Circulation in U.S. (Int'l)
    648,900 (219,500) for weekday (Monday to Friday)
  1,185,400 (220,500) for Sunday

  Paid Digital Subscribers
  910,000 as of December 28, 2014

  Monthly (Annual) Digital Readership
  31MM (372MM) unique desktop/laptop visitors (U.S.)
  42MM (504MM) unique desktop/laptop visitors (WW)
  28MM (336MM) unique mobile device visitors (U.S.)
Off these eyeballs, they made:

  $667.5MM from print subscribers
  $169.3MM from digital subscribers

  $483.5MM from print advertising
  $178.8MM from digital advertising
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